James R. Mirick sets the record straight on things he cares about

Dick Cheney, America’s Putin

As the Fourth of July looms on the horizon, with all it’s hyperbolic foaming and blowing about our heritage and our great country, I’m forced to write a slightly different post. I regret that I have come to the conclusion that Vice President Cheney is the antithesis of America and everything America stands for. No foreign terrorist, no spy, no communist operative, has done more to undermine the foundations of our civil society, our laws, and all of the things we hold dear and that our patriot ancestors fought and shed their blood for, than he has.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to provide some vast set of links to all the things that support this rather sweeping statement, I haven’t the energy to compile them. His actions in office are nothing but one outrage piled on another, the latest being that he and his office are not subject to any oversight regarding their use and storage of classified documents. Based on history I assume this will be superseded by other even greater assaults on our heritage and our freedoms, done in the name of “protecting our freedoms and heritage.”

A rational person who lived through the Cold War as I did is not at all eager to watch the phoenix-like re-emergence of Imperial Soviet Russia, which is being engineered by the ex-KGB-spy-master Vladimir Putin. Rights so recently won from the Kremlin, the disassembly of the communist central plans, freedom of the press, at least some limited transparency of government, freedom of religion, all of this is being curtailed, curbed, and revoked by the cold and calculating hand of an ex-spy.

What ho, in our own midst we have ex-CIA-spy-master Dick Cheney, attempting to fashion an Imperial America with governmental agencies allowed to spy on us, our emails, and our activities, revoking hapeas corpus for people who may be arbitrarily classified as “terrorists,” indeterminate detention without lawyers or a trial, relentless attempting to close down of any meaningful transparency in government, and on and on.

And now the Administration’s PR lackeys, taking a clue from Orwell’s 1984, are preparing us for “indefinite and ongoing war against Terror,” seemingly a key part of Cheney’s plan to create a long-term, permanent one-party Republican hegemony in American politics. And so far, we’re allowing this to happen.

Then the scary part: Look at the two of them. The same disdainful stare, the same smug half-smile . . . they’re drinking the same stuff, whatever it is. And it’s having the same effect on them both. The question is, will they continue to follow the same course? Very scary, in both cases.

UPDATE: an article in the New York Times on 7/9/07 highlights Cheny’s participation in the Oliver North testimony during the Iran / Contra hearings, shows that his proclivity to an imperial presidency started at least 20 years ago. It shows what is in effect his profound distrust of the electorate. He seems more Putin that Putin himself!